View full size(Press-Register/Mike Kittrell)Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, seen here on March 7, 2008, has urged the court to replace the rules with those recommended by a committee of the American Bar Association.

MONTGOMERY, Ala.
-- The Republican majority on the Alabama Supreme Court has rejected
proposals to make it easier for the public to file complaints accusing
judges of unethical conduct.

The court's eight Republicans decided
to maintain rules that legal groups say are out of step with the rest
of the country and designed to stifle complaints. The rules include
giving the judge the name of the person who filed a complaint, what it
entails and any evidence gathered during the investigation of the
complaint.

The rules do allow for the information in the complaint
to be withheld from a judge if there are indications the judge might
destroy evidence or pose a threat to someone.

The Supreme Court's
lone Democrat, Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, urged the court to replace
the rules with those recommended by a committee of the American Bar
Association.

Cobb wrote that the current rules impose requirements
that exist in no other state and "engender a fear of retribution" among
anyone who complains about a judge.

"Why would the highest court
in Alabama make it more difficult to discipline an unethical judge?"
Cobb asked in her dissent.

The eight Republicans did not explain
the majority's reasoning in their order of April 1. The order was not
publicly announced, but The Associated Press learned of it from court
officials.

Under Alabama law, the state Judicial Inquiry
Commission receives complaints accusing judges of unethical conduct. The
commission acts much like a grand jury. If it believes there has been
wrongdoing, it refers the case to the state Court of the Judiciary,
which tries the judge. The most serious action the court can take is
removing a judge from office.

The court's most famous case in
recent years has been the removal of Republican Chief Justice Roy Moore
in 2003 for ignoring a federal judge's order to remove a Ten
Commandments monument from the lobby of the state judicial building.

The
Alabama Supreme Court sets the rules for the Judicial Inquiry
Commission.

In 2001, when Moore was chief justice, the
GOP-dominated Supreme Court changed the commission's rules to no longer
protect the identity of people filing complaints. It wrote rules
providing a judge with detailed information about a complaint, including
who filed it, what evidence is gathered, and who is interviewed during
the investigation.

That made the Judicial Inquiry Commission's
work less like a grand jury, which operates largely in secret.

The
Supreme Court made the rule changes retroactive so that they applied to
charges the Judicial Inquiry Commission had brought against Supreme
Court Justice Harold See. Those charges accused him of running false and
misleading ads against Moore in the 2000 Republican primary for chief
justice, which Moore won.

The Judicial Inquiry Commission chose to
drop the See case rather than disclose its sources of information about
his campaign ads.

See, who is now retired, said he hadn't seen
the Supreme Court's recent ruling. But he said the Supreme Court's role
is not to make it easy for the Judicial Inquiry Commission to prosecute a
case; the court's role is to make the process just for everyone
involved. He said it's the same reason police aren't allowed to write
the rules for how criminal cases are handled in court.

The
American Judicature Society, a nonprofit group that works to maintain
the integrity of the courts, said Alabama's rules seemed designed to
discourage complaints about judges and give more rights to judges than
defendants in criminal courts get.

"No criminal who might lose
their liberty or life is given these rights," said Cindy Gray, the
society's director of judicial ethics.

In 2009, when Birmingham
attorney Tom Wells was president of the American Bar Association, the
association accepted an invitation from the Alabama Supreme Court to
study Alabama's rules.

The ABA's Standing Committee on
Professional Discipline recommended undoing several of the 2001 rule
changes, including notification of the complainant and providing
evidence while the investigation is in progress.

It found that
telling a judge who filed a complaint "has a chilling effect on those
who may want to file a complaint against a judge." The committee noted
that complaints dropped significantly after the 2001 rule change that
required a person's identity to be disclosed -- from 279 in 2000 to 159
in 2009.

Wells said the committee recommended rules changes that
would put Alabama in line with the best practices in the country, but
the Supreme Court has the final say. He said the court must balance the
right of a person to face his accuser with the reluctance of a lawyer to
file a complaint against a judge he must practice before or of a fellow
judge to file a complaint against a colleague he sees every day.

DeKalb
County Circuit Judge Randall Cole, a member of the Judicial Inquiry
Commission for 13 years, said the commission was disappointed the
Supreme Court didn't make more changes in the rules. He said lawyers and
court personnel are in the best position to notice a problem with a
judge, but they are reluctant to sign a complaint given the authority a
judge has over them.

He also said supplying information to a judge
during an investigation seems inappropriate. The time to supply it, he
said, is if the commission decides to file charges with the Court of the
Judiciary.

Moore, who was chief justice during the 2001 rule
changes, declined comment on the Supreme Court's order.

In Chief
Justice Cobb's dissent, she ended by saying: "How this court's action --
or inaction -- today might serve to engender the 'respect of the people'
that is so necessary for its existence, I cannot imagine."